                            DJGPP GNU C-COMPILER

    Will the GNU C port to DOS/WINDOWS survive Windows ME? This is a
question that excercises the minds of a few dozen people worldwide. Or
is it millions ? Did 'Quake' use DJGPP ? Do the owners of Quake care ?
Boot from the CD-ROM and zap phantoms in a dungeon. Bypass the Windoz
stuff. But then the game runs from CD-ROM, and chance is the game will
be replaced when the device is needed.

    A game of lasting popularity should live on the Hard Disk; MS
Windows gives space to Fritz and Chessmaster 2000 but GNU Chess is not
in the box. How many people would bother to get a commercial chess
program if the freeware version came in the box?

Much high performance software would like to run from CD-ROM with a
customised operating system. That's fine for some, but software which
drives the TV card must live on the hard disk. This means it must be
runneable by a click on the Windows Desktop. So the program needs to
use DPMI or Dos Protected Memory Interface. This gives the programmer
freedom to use multi-megabyte arrays to parse HTML & display images.

    This sort of thing is necessary under the DOS model because of the
weird memory map of early INTEL processors. Many programmers have
called this a 'brain-dead' architecture, but some very survivable
species have evolved which go on to eating their own brains at
maturity.

    A 32-bit compiler independent of Borland and Microsoft needs to be a
vehicle for good quality software. This should include what people
want:-

    Web browsing.       Make Lynx fully featured. The old features
                        just get better and better with more silly
                        commercials on websites.

    Installation.       Write distribution CD-ROMS for dual boot
                        Windows/Linux. Create Partitions for common
                        OS choices.

    File maintenance.   Programs are needed to look at UNIX partitions
                        on devices. DOS CD-ROM drivers and MSCDEX seem
                        to allow fairly generic access to the ISO style
                        file system on the CD-ROM.

    Task manager.       That is the greatest difficulty. MS-DOS had
                        a form of task management with DOSKEY, but that is
                        far from the UNIX method which allows task
                        starting and stopping via shell commands.

    Device drivers.     Things considered exotic a few months ago become
                        essentials very quickly. Everyone wants to crack
                        the digital TV channels in real time.







